Kalray Reaches a New Milestone with the Signing of the Second Phase of the Industrial Cooperation Agreement with Openchip

Following the first milestone announced on May, 22nd (an intellectual property license agreement), Kalray has now completed the final stage of this agreement with the signing of a service agreement covering the development of a customized version of its DPU for Openchip.Through this initiative, Kalray is leveraging its expertise as a DPU specialist to address key AI challenges.

“We are very pleased to announce the signing of the second phase of this strategic industrial cooperation agreement with Openchip. This agreement confirms the relevance of the technologies and the expertise we’ve developed around DPUs over many years and marks the launch of our new business model. It reflects our shared ambition with Openchip to build a European leader in processors and acceleration solutions for the AI of tomorrow,” said Éric Baissus, chairman of the executive board, Kalray.

“We are very excited to have signed this agreement with Kalray, which will allow us to work closely with their teams. The DPU variants we will develop together, combined with the products our teams are already building across Europe, will enable us to offer a complete and sovereign solution for the AI Gigafactories of the future,”  said Francesc Guim, CEO, Openchip.

Openchip, a European partner at the heart of industrial sovereignty challenges
Founded in 2021, Openchip is a European company specialized in designing and developing hardware acceleration architectures for AI, high-performance computing, and critical embedded systems. Its shareholders include GTD (a major European engineering group specialized in critical software and systems) and BSC (Barcelona Supercomputing Center), providing both industrial strength and excellence in research. Openchip has been recognized as a strategic player by the European Commission and has been selected for major EU-funded initiatives, including €111M from the Next gen EU fund, the IPCEI ME/CT program, and the €240M DARE project under Horizon Europe.

Signing of the second phase of the industrial cooperation agreement with Openchip, focused on key artificial intelligence challenges
Kalray recalls having signed in May a first non-exclusive IP license agreement, granting Openchip usage rights on certain technologies essential for the joint development of a next-gen DPU processor aimed at AI applications.

The second phase, signed, concerns a service agreement, aimed at developing a version of Kalray’s DPU specifically targeting future high-performance computing systems and AI Gigafactories.

This contract is accompanied by a temporary transfer of the software development activity related to the DPU, which includes a team of approximately fifty employees, in the form of a management lease. This transferred activity is specifically intended to cover the development of open-source software components within the framework of open RISC-V architectures.

Kalray reminds that the completion of this second phase could lead Openchip to acquire a stake in Kalray.